Disease Models


In the last 25 years researchers have developed model systems using both vertebrates (zebrafish) and invertebrates (the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster; and the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans) for drug screening. The small size, high fecundity, and experimental tractability of small animal models enable cost-effective and rapid screening of numerous compounds. These experiments have been performed using wild type animals as well as engineered animals which show a human-like disease. Below we show a list of applications using our WMicrotracker system.



Disease model in Zebrafish: Epilepsy

Zebrafish have been widely used as a model system for studying developmental processes, but in the last decade, they have also emerged as a valuable system for modeling human disease. The development and function of zebrafish organs are strikingly similar to those of humans, and the ease of creating mutant or transgenic fish has facilitated the generation of disease models.
Exposure of zebrafish larvae to a common convulsant agent (pentylenetetrazole, PTZ) induced a stereotyped and concentration-dependent sequence of behavioral changes culminating in clonus-like convulsions. Tracking of swimming behavior is easy to implement using our WMicrotracker system. Below you'll find a procedure example.

Measuring PTZ effect as a Pharmacological Epilesy model in zebrafish larvae
In this experiment we can observe the effect of PTZ on 5dpf zebrafish larvae behavior after 15 minutes of drug exposure. The plot shows the tracking of swimming behavior and the distance (in mm) for each fish cultured in a 6-well microplate. An increase in the total traveled distance is observed when fishes are treated.

Methodology: (1)Collect fertilized eggs in a petri dish with E3 medium. (2)Pass one 48-hpf non-hatched zebrafish embryo to each well of a 6-well plate. Fill the volume with E3. (3)Incubate 48 h at 28?C to allow hatching. Grow the fishes until 5dpf. (4)Add a 10x concentrated solution of anticonvulsants to test. Use six technical replicates. (5)Add PTZ to induce convulsions. Recommended doses are 2.5 to 10mM. (6)Register larvae activity using WMicrotracker for a period of 15minutes. Set "tracking mode".